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An interview with actress Tina Louise is a bit of a negotiation. There is a part of her life she doesn’t wish to discuss - her role as Ginger Grant for three seasons on the sitcom Gilligan's Island - which is fine by this reporter. It’s been hashed over ad infinitum.

Louise also prefers not like to dwell on bygones in general. When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his famous last line of The Great Gatsby - “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” - the great writer clearly did not have Louise in mind.

“I can’t deal with going back,” she says. “I like now.”

New Yorker Tina Louise is a renaissance arts woman. She acts, paints, writes and sings. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Born Tina Blacker to fashion-model mother Betty and Brooklyn, NY, shop-owner father Joseph, Louise started acting early on. As a teen, she played in Two’s Company and The Fifth Season on stage. In her first movie, God's Little Acre, she won a Golden Globe as Best Promising Newcomer for her role as Griselda Walden.

Louise also has a nice set of pipes. Her 12-track album, It’s Time For Tina, includes "Tonight Is The Night" and "I'm In The Mood For Love" arrangements by Jim Timmens and Buddy Weed And His Orchestra. Coleman is featured on tenor sax.

The renaissance person she is, Louise paints and has written children’s books - When I Grow Up, What Does A Bee Do? and Sunday A Memoir. She has a writer daughter, Caprice, with the late Les Crane.

Louise and I had a chance to chat recently. Last July, she was involved in a serious fall on a Hampton Jitney bus, fracturing her coccyx bone. It has been months of recuperation. On the mend now, she works out in the gym and does a lot of walking near her apartment in the United Nations area to build back her strength. Following is part one of edited excerpts from an interesting conversation.